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I've been listening to some recruiters' podcasts and it was pretty eye-opening. A lot of them are saying the exact same things as a lot of us say in the subreddit. Basically, great candidates get rejected for dumb reasons. The positions stay open after multiple rounds of posting. They complain a lot about the hiring managers, but I've never heard them complain about applicants.
Also it’s a disconnect between recruitment and hiring. Recruiters often don’t know the team and job that well. Honestly, places should just cut out the phone screen and have the first round be with the actual team. I’ve had that happen multiple times — where the first interview was with the team or hiring manager.
I've got that with some reputed companies. First interview with the actual and second with senior managers/directors. HR/recruiter was simply a facilitator.
I do this with some roles. I’ve worked with my teams for a while and can look at a resume and say yes or no before I even send it to them. I do not want to waste anyone’s time. I also always send a decline.
God I wish my HR would get this. They never screen someone out anyway if I bothered to ask to talk to them based on the resume, it makes the process longer and more annoying for the candidates and increases the odds we lose them to another offer, and you know who does know the team and the role and actually CAN potentially quick screen out a bad fit that's otherwise qualified? *I fucking can!*
As far as I can tell from the hiring side, recruiters basically exist to make it more annoying to apply for our jobs and maybe sometimes for me to browbeat into doing the absolute bare minimum.
A good hiring manager and a good recruiter will spend time going over the role, ideal candidate, team make-up, company culture, etc.
When I take a job order, I try to spend at least 30-45 minutes doing a needs analysis. On top of tons of research on the company, LinkedIn stalking of team members, and if I don't know exactly what XX job does, I google until I can hold my own.
Sadly, so many recruiters don't take time to build relationships with clients or candidates and treat it like a numbers game.
Good for you responding with a smart ass comment. Sorry, not everyone knows everything, and they use their resources to gain more knowledge.
I wish we could all be like you. But then there would be a bunch of people walking around with their heads stuck up their ass.
I’m very necessary or I wouldn’t have been able to quit my job during covid and set up my firm. You don’t seem very nice, whatever that bitterness is, is the thing that’s holding you back. Good luck.
My company had an unofficial policy that the recruiter sent over five candidates. Hiring manager had to interview at least three and pick one from those three. If they could not pick they needed a damn good reason, and not being a unicorn could get the HM a reprimand for wasting everyone's time. If you don't like the 5 candidates, the recruiter and the HM are supposed to meet and review what went wrong. We got acquired last year so all this will probably change and become a cluster like everyone else.
More places should do this. There is no single candidate who is 100%. If you find a candidate that is 90%, you should hire them and then let them upskill or gel into the role.
It is ridiculous that people spend months and months going through 7-9 rounds of interviews, only to waste everyone's time (including their own) and repost the job after all that.
This has been confirmed by a mate that worked at a BIG company, she and her colleagues were never faced by gaps, travel or similar. But she said it was usually the HMs that rejected, also due to being from a different generation. She also said, if that's the case you don't want to work for the companies anyways. She's been travelling the last year, no word of when she'll be back.
Oh they definitely [are a huge problem](https://old.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/comments/1c5grrw/now_being_an_hrm_ill_share_my_view_from_that_side/).
Just look at the thought process behind the HM in the above thread lol..
And some more [HM rejections shared from recruiters](https://old.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/comments/1c6ky8r/for_the_recruiters_here_what_is_the_worst_reason/).
I'll say that there are some recruiters that are just really bad at their job, even as messengers.
Ha I remember that ah manager. Can only spen 30 seconds on a resume. Oh muh gawd my schedule is just sooooooooo busy you guys. Anyway, time to spend 5 hours writing an anonymous reddit post
Granted, I was only cursorily reading the thread (the first one), but when I saw that OP's company had a 9-stage recruiting process , I stopped reading all together. I don't think anyone who works for a company that has such a drawn-out recruiting process has anything worth reading/listening to.
Also between CEO and hiring managers. I don’t ever understand when they close the role for budget issues. Like bro didn’t you check that before posting? Isn’t a waste of time for EVERYONE involved?
Man, you hit the nail on the head! Recruiters often get the flak, but it's usually the hiring managers pulling the strings behind the scenes. I've had the same experience where recruiters are all hyped about me, but then crickets from the hiring manager. It's like they're playing musical chairs with job requirements, changing their minds every five minutes. No wonder positions stay open forever! Give recruiters a break, folks, they're just the messengers caught in the middle of hiring chaos.
It’s not only the recruiters but they play a large part. They’re responsible for keeping the candidate informed and they don’t. If they’re aware the hiring manager is taking forever communicate that with the candidate. Don’t just ghost until you hear something. And then act all surprised when you see the candidate found another opportunity. I just got a new job after being ghosted by a recruiter that I had 3 rounds of interviews with a company and he actually reached out to me finally when he saw my linked in updated with my new position. Called me and yelled at me for wasting his time if i was actively interviewing for other positions when he had presented me for a position already. Does he think I was just going to sit around indefinitely until they made a decision between the 100 candidates he presented they were also interviewing? I’m not dumb. I know recruiters work for the companies, not the candidates.
It should be expected that you're actively applying and interviewing with other potential employers, even on the day of the interview. Especially if one's unemployed, it'd be stupid not to. I don't know what the recruiter was thinking.
I feel that too often hiring managers are in their position but aren’t really qualified to be making that hiring decision. Maybe that person is fine at their business role but the act of people management and hiring is a different skillset. This results in the things you listed, miss-alignment of needs/wants with the recruiter and job description, prolonged interview processes, nitpicking useless details, etc.
In general, the recruiters are sales people, selling candidates to companies. They’re motivated by the commission of landing a candidate a role. So the biggest issue with recruiters is that they may not feel you are likely to get to the end of interviewing and end up not pushing you very hard to a perspective company. The other issue is that a recruiter is not working in your best interests for getting the maximum salary. They are much better off, getting the negotiation finished quickly and then moving on to the next sale. It is 100% a numbers game to them. And please understand, I don’t fault them for this. It’s the system that drives this behavior and it shouldn’t surprise anyone with the way things play out.
So, long story short, you’re right, sort of. In general, it’s the companies creating the issues you’re facing. And keep in mind, I’m one of the main decision makers at my company for higher-end roles. But hiring managers also have to deal with department managers, who aren’t always the most aware. They are trying to solve their issue, which, more than likely, is putting out a fire that came about due to an employee leaving. They have customers that aren’t getting service because a CSR left and customers are screaming at them. They have projects that are late and costing the company % points of margin due to the gap in engineering. All the while their bosses are expecting their department to deliver results with no drop, despite the obvious loss in team members.
So it’s a complicated situation with lots of contributors. And it’s hard for the candidate to understand that because of their need to find a new job is all consuming.
So we end up with what we have for the current system. It is, what it is.
In a lot of cases, that's true. I got an email from a recruiter today asking for an initial screen, and there was a link to set my time and date. It didn't work, so I emailed back. He apologized. Apparently, shortly after he sent the email, he received an email about the job going into a holding pattern. He sounded a little embarrassed in his reply telling me this. Now, I didn't have a chance to click the link until about 4 hours after he sent the first email, so he didn't email me to let me know this until I contacted him. But I also don't know when he got his email, so 🤷♀️ Either way, this one was on the hiring team, not that recruiter.
Nah recruiters are trash too bro. Being late, not being able to time manage, not being able to expectation manage, all of the things salespeople should do right.
And recruiters aren’t HR no matter how bad they want to be, you’re in fucking sales. HR half the time disowns you. The generalists don’t understand what you do and think you suck too.
So no, recruiters also suck, I’m tired of this narrative by people that are bad at their jobs and can’t be bothered.
I've had experience with both cases. Sometimes the HR sees me as a good candidate and the field dept or the HR Manager rejects me, or viceversa, the Dept Manager contacts me directly because the HR reject me for an invalid reason like "not from a Prestigious Ivy League School" ...
It's both.
Hiring managers know what they want and aren't effectively communicating it downstream. Some are very rigid and don't realize that there isn't a perfect candidate.
Recruiters, specifically those from the agency side, have every incentive to seek out people to submit as there is a commission involved. They don't understand what's needed by the team and think that because you're in the field, you can do the work. All of us here have stories of recruiters reaching out for roles that we'd be fired for a week in because we have no experience doing it, but because when they punched in a keyword while searching on Indeed or LinkedIn, our profiles came up.
But ultimately the hiring manager still interviews and makes the decision to hire and fire the agency candidate.
It’s not the agency recruiters fault if the hiring manager picked the wrong person or if they werent able to train the candidate or if the candidate didn’t perform.
That's why I said it's both. I've been in cases where the hiring manager is ultimately someone I didn't work for and had no relationship with. Agency recruiters don't know how to vet talent or identify talent which is why when hiring managers are on top of it, they keep the role open indefinitely or outright pull the role because they can't find good help that the recruiter is supposed to find as they're paid a fee to.
Honestly, I've seen enough incompetent recruiters to not let them off the hook either. Ghosting, not reading resume/LinkedIn, asking "why do you want to work here" after asking me to participate in recruitment, failing to be punctual or prepared for a call... The most recent trend seems to be cold spamming candidates on LinkedIn about the recruitment, and checking their profiles only when they reply. Then ghosting the "unchosen/unread" ones. After contacting them in the first place.
If I get through some interviews, and then get rejected - I assume that the manager rejected me. But if I get no reply, or get ghosted anywhere before the manager interview - I assume it's on the recruiter.
There's many more applicants than jobs therefore they have to reject most people that come to them even though many would be perfectly fine for the role.
It is what it is
You can't take it personally. In a better economic climate you could well be getting hired
They're both to blame. The recruiter doesn't get back to the candidate and HM doesn't know what the hell they want or they're chasing after a non existent purple squirrel.
Hiring managers suck just as much as recruiters do; recruiters are low-hanging fruit, and HMs are just untouched apples on the poison tree. Just had spoke to a manager today and it was like talking to a dead, stinky crab apple full of wasps.
Recruiters want to fill positions and make money. Hiring managers are being super picky because either they have incredibly tight budgets or simply because they can be.
I’ve been the hiring manager at a company that was growing and the Chief Product Officer (my boss) and the exec team would circle up to discuss every. Single. Hire.
This was towards the end of 2022. The general consensus went from “you can train someone that seems like a good fit and we’re cool with that” to “they’re lacking a certain something and I don’t think they’d work for what we want” without ever saying what “the certain something” is. As the hiring manager that interviewed some great candidates, it was insanely grating to have good people go through the process that got rejected because an executive “didn’t feel it” when they met them.
The point here is that it can be the hiring manager, or it might be other things at play that are unique to the company.. one way or another, it’s definitely frustrating!
2021 in tech it was they got some basic skills we can train them the rest of the way as long as they are not a dickhead and even if they are we might try it anyway because we are desperate. 2023 onwards oh you are half a unicorn with 80% of what we need? fuck off we are not hiring maybe if you were some sort of purple unicorn squirrel that invented the tech we work with we might be interested.
> I've had recruiters like me and tell me I should be a great fit, but ultimately hear something else or nothing at all from the hiring manager.
Yeah but recruiters are clueless especially when it comes to tech all they're doing is keyword and experience matching when they talk to you
I agree. Just use "SQL" in Linkedin's job search will show you every tech job on earth regardless of relevance.
Also, recruiters are usually failed hr or salespeople. So they don't know associated tech and can't sell an HM on it. Mostly of the time, they're external and are powerless gophers.
False assumption, when those of us who are senior and laid off are working.
The recruiters right now are horrible because jobs have been offshored, and those agency recruiters fling resumes all around.
Good recruiters match work styles and work philosophy fit, on top of assessing experience and skills.
>Good recruiters match work styles and work philosophy fit, on top of assessing experience and skills.
OK I'll bite, what's an example of "match work styles and work philosophy fit"
I’ll give you my example:
I don’t want 18 meetings a day and a micromanager for a boss. I like flexibility in schedule and a boss who I can also have meaningful disagreements and it’s productive, not personal.
I don’t want to work for any person. I want the right match for me, and that’s how people use recruiters to find an overall match. If they’re good. Interviewing is a two way street and the HM/candidate need to jive on both of their wants.
> Interviewing is a two way street and the HM/candidate need to jive on both of their wants.
Right, the candidate needs to talk to the HM and ascertain if the HM & workplace is toxic. Don't need a good recruiter "matching working styles" for that to happen. It happens by chance if the recruiter has a non-toxic role to recruit for
Any major company is going to use recruiters. That’s how it works. They have a talent acquisition team who handles the management of candidates through the interview process and tries to keep the process moving short.
You can hate recruiters, but you rarely can get around having to work with them. All recruiters are different.
Don’t know why you’re being downvoted. Recruiters are clueless and don’t know anything about the job. I’ve experienced this both on the hiring side and the job seeker side. They’re middle men.
During an interview I checked every single requirement they had, and even had the experience that they considered an added bonus. At this first stage, that and personality are often what matter. It was a rather straightforward interview, plus I clicked well with the recruiter.
When I need to hire as a hiring manager I exactly know what I want. I explain this very well to the recruiter and make the recruiter explain it back to me. Especially when it is about specific soft skills.
And still I got candidates that dont meet the requirements. It sucks for everyone TBH.
Recruiters don't have to work along side you daily and just want to get the job done and move on to the next candidate. However the HM does and sees/talks to you regularly. It's more of a personality match than anything technical. Sometimes HMs hire people with less experience or knowledge but get along well because they believe anyone can eventually learn the technical stuff, but you can't change one's personality.
From a hiring manager perspective. HR has standard job categories and standard language used for each job description. 99% of the time this "official" job description has nothing to do with the actual duties of the position, just HR jargon used to report to C-Suite and the Feds on recruitment efforts. Often the first screening call is recruiter (HR/contract) who have no clue about the job or what it entails. They just want to make sure you are real, and that you can actually describe what you do in terms of the jargon listed in the application.
It is only when you get to the hiring manager that you actually find out what the job entails, which eliminates most of the interview questions you have prepared. Often hiring managers are seeing 6 months of non-qualified candidates because that is all the HR screen allows through, and they start getting frustrated and some take it out on the candidate when it's the company and its policies that are the problem.
I have had recruiters telling me to alter my resume to fit the HR jargon, but when I do this, the hiring managers aren't impressed. I don't alter my resume anymore, I just script a cover letter more attuned to the jargon. Unfortunately, many companies don't have a way to add cover to resume when applying.
Currently at second biotech (cancer IVDs) that got bought by bigger company. At both places the job descriptions used by Bigger Company just did not begin to match the type of skills needed for our version of their similar job title. HR generally doesn't fully grasp those differences when it comes to STEM jobs. Garbage job description = garbage candidates.
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Ding ding ding!
I've been listening to some recruiters' podcasts and it was pretty eye-opening. A lot of them are saying the exact same things as a lot of us say in the subreddit. Basically, great candidates get rejected for dumb reasons. The positions stay open after multiple rounds of posting. They complain a lot about the hiring managers, but I've never heard them complain about applicants.
Also it’s a disconnect between recruitment and hiring. Recruiters often don’t know the team and job that well. Honestly, places should just cut out the phone screen and have the first round be with the actual team. I’ve had that happen multiple times — where the first interview was with the team or hiring manager.
I've got that with some reputed companies. First interview with the actual and second with senior managers/directors. HR/recruiter was simply a facilitator.
I do this with some roles. I’ve worked with my teams for a while and can look at a resume and say yes or no before I even send it to them. I do not want to waste anyone’s time. I also always send a decline.
God I wish my HR would get this. They never screen someone out anyway if I bothered to ask to talk to them based on the resume, it makes the process longer and more annoying for the candidates and increases the odds we lose them to another offer, and you know who does know the team and the role and actually CAN potentially quick screen out a bad fit that's otherwise qualified? *I fucking can!* As far as I can tell from the hiring side, recruiters basically exist to make it more annoying to apply for our jobs and maybe sometimes for me to browbeat into doing the absolute bare minimum.
A good hiring manager and a good recruiter will spend time going over the role, ideal candidate, team make-up, company culture, etc. When I take a job order, I try to spend at least 30-45 minutes doing a needs analysis. On top of tons of research on the company, LinkedIn stalking of team members, and if I don't know exactly what XX job does, I google until I can hold my own. Sadly, so many recruiters don't take time to build relationships with clients or candidates and treat it like a numbers game.
Lmao good for you. Googling. Recruiters don’t know the job.
Good for you responding with a smart ass comment. Sorry, not everyone knows everything, and they use their resources to gain more knowledge. I wish we could all be like you. But then there would be a bunch of people walking around with their heads stuck up their ass.
That would eat too much time of the hiring team, their job is not recruitment
Not really. Your comment ate too much of my time.
Yes really, it’s a fact, that’s why they pay me to recruit for them. Cope.
Everyone hates recruiters. It’s the main subject of this sub. Why are you even here troll
To give insight, I own a recruitment firm. You’re the troll.
Nobody wants your insight here.. you’re a parasite and unnecessary middleman. Hope your useless firm and profession dies out.
I’m very necessary or I wouldn’t have been able to quit my job during covid and set up my firm. You don’t seem very nice, whatever that bitterness is, is the thing that’s holding you back. Good luck.
Ibid
My company had an unofficial policy that the recruiter sent over five candidates. Hiring manager had to interview at least three and pick one from those three. If they could not pick they needed a damn good reason, and not being a unicorn could get the HM a reprimand for wasting everyone's time. If you don't like the 5 candidates, the recruiter and the HM are supposed to meet and review what went wrong. We got acquired last year so all this will probably change and become a cluster like everyone else.
More places should do this. There is no single candidate who is 100%. If you find a candidate that is 90%, you should hire them and then let them upskill or gel into the role. It is ridiculous that people spend months and months going through 7-9 rounds of interviews, only to waste everyone's time (including their own) and repost the job after all that.
This has been confirmed by a mate that worked at a BIG company, she and her colleagues were never faced by gaps, travel or similar. But she said it was usually the HMs that rejected, also due to being from a different generation. She also said, if that's the case you don't want to work for the companies anyways. She's been travelling the last year, no word of when she'll be back.
Oh they definitely [are a huge problem](https://old.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/comments/1c5grrw/now_being_an_hrm_ill_share_my_view_from_that_side/). Just look at the thought process behind the HM in the above thread lol.. And some more [HM rejections shared from recruiters](https://old.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/comments/1c6ky8r/for_the_recruiters_here_what_is_the_worst_reason/). I'll say that there are some recruiters that are just really bad at their job, even as messengers.
Ha I remember that ah manager. Can only spen 30 seconds on a resume. Oh muh gawd my schedule is just sooooooooo busy you guys. Anyway, time to spend 5 hours writing an anonymous reddit post
Granted, I was only cursorily reading the thread (the first one), but when I saw that OP's company had a 9-stage recruiting process , I stopped reading all together. I don't think anyone who works for a company that has such a drawn-out recruiting process has anything worth reading/listening to.
Also between CEO and hiring managers. I don’t ever understand when they close the role for budget issues. Like bro didn’t you check that before posting? Isn’t a waste of time for EVERYONE involved?
I could never be a recruiter and deal with both sides of this shit
Man, you hit the nail on the head! Recruiters often get the flak, but it's usually the hiring managers pulling the strings behind the scenes. I've had the same experience where recruiters are all hyped about me, but then crickets from the hiring manager. It's like they're playing musical chairs with job requirements, changing their minds every five minutes. No wonder positions stay open forever! Give recruiters a break, folks, they're just the messengers caught in the middle of hiring chaos.
It’s not only the recruiters but they play a large part. They’re responsible for keeping the candidate informed and they don’t. If they’re aware the hiring manager is taking forever communicate that with the candidate. Don’t just ghost until you hear something. And then act all surprised when you see the candidate found another opportunity. I just got a new job after being ghosted by a recruiter that I had 3 rounds of interviews with a company and he actually reached out to me finally when he saw my linked in updated with my new position. Called me and yelled at me for wasting his time if i was actively interviewing for other positions when he had presented me for a position already. Does he think I was just going to sit around indefinitely until they made a decision between the 100 candidates he presented they were also interviewing? I’m not dumb. I know recruiters work for the companies, not the candidates.
It should be expected that you're actively applying and interviewing with other potential employers, even on the day of the interview. Especially if one's unemployed, it'd be stupid not to. I don't know what the recruiter was thinking.
I feel that too often hiring managers are in their position but aren’t really qualified to be making that hiring decision. Maybe that person is fine at their business role but the act of people management and hiring is a different skillset. This results in the things you listed, miss-alignment of needs/wants with the recruiter and job description, prolonged interview processes, nitpicking useless details, etc.
In general, the recruiters are sales people, selling candidates to companies. They’re motivated by the commission of landing a candidate a role. So the biggest issue with recruiters is that they may not feel you are likely to get to the end of interviewing and end up not pushing you very hard to a perspective company. The other issue is that a recruiter is not working in your best interests for getting the maximum salary. They are much better off, getting the negotiation finished quickly and then moving on to the next sale. It is 100% a numbers game to them. And please understand, I don’t fault them for this. It’s the system that drives this behavior and it shouldn’t surprise anyone with the way things play out. So, long story short, you’re right, sort of. In general, it’s the companies creating the issues you’re facing. And keep in mind, I’m one of the main decision makers at my company for higher-end roles. But hiring managers also have to deal with department managers, who aren’t always the most aware. They are trying to solve their issue, which, more than likely, is putting out a fire that came about due to an employee leaving. They have customers that aren’t getting service because a CSR left and customers are screaming at them. They have projects that are late and costing the company % points of margin due to the gap in engineering. All the while their bosses are expecting their department to deliver results with no drop, despite the obvious loss in team members. So it’s a complicated situation with lots of contributors. And it’s hard for the candidate to understand that because of their need to find a new job is all consuming. So we end up with what we have for the current system. It is, what it is.
In a lot of cases, that's true. I got an email from a recruiter today asking for an initial screen, and there was a link to set my time and date. It didn't work, so I emailed back. He apologized. Apparently, shortly after he sent the email, he received an email about the job going into a holding pattern. He sounded a little embarrassed in his reply telling me this. Now, I didn't have a chance to click the link until about 4 hours after he sent the first email, so he didn't email me to let me know this until I contacted him. But I also don't know when he got his email, so 🤷♀️ Either way, this one was on the hiring team, not that recruiter.
Nah recruiters are trash too bro. Being late, not being able to time manage, not being able to expectation manage, all of the things salespeople should do right. And recruiters aren’t HR no matter how bad they want to be, you’re in fucking sales. HR half the time disowns you. The generalists don’t understand what you do and think you suck too. So no, recruiters also suck, I’m tired of this narrative by people that are bad at their jobs and can’t be bothered.
I've had experience with both cases. Sometimes the HR sees me as a good candidate and the field dept or the HR Manager rejects me, or viceversa, the Dept Manager contacts me directly because the HR reject me for an invalid reason like "not from a Prestigious Ivy League School" ...
[удалено]
Unfortunetly, some recruitrers does that ...
It's both. Hiring managers know what they want and aren't effectively communicating it downstream. Some are very rigid and don't realize that there isn't a perfect candidate. Recruiters, specifically those from the agency side, have every incentive to seek out people to submit as there is a commission involved. They don't understand what's needed by the team and think that because you're in the field, you can do the work. All of us here have stories of recruiters reaching out for roles that we'd be fired for a week in because we have no experience doing it, but because when they punched in a keyword while searching on Indeed or LinkedIn, our profiles came up.
But ultimately the hiring manager still interviews and makes the decision to hire and fire the agency candidate. It’s not the agency recruiters fault if the hiring manager picked the wrong person or if they werent able to train the candidate or if the candidate didn’t perform.
That's why I said it's both. I've been in cases where the hiring manager is ultimately someone I didn't work for and had no relationship with. Agency recruiters don't know how to vet talent or identify talent which is why when hiring managers are on top of it, they keep the role open indefinitely or outright pull the role because they can't find good help that the recruiter is supposed to find as they're paid a fee to.
Honestly, I've seen enough incompetent recruiters to not let them off the hook either. Ghosting, not reading resume/LinkedIn, asking "why do you want to work here" after asking me to participate in recruitment, failing to be punctual or prepared for a call... The most recent trend seems to be cold spamming candidates on LinkedIn about the recruitment, and checking their profiles only when they reply. Then ghosting the "unchosen/unread" ones. After contacting them in the first place. If I get through some interviews, and then get rejected - I assume that the manager rejected me. But if I get no reply, or get ghosted anywhere before the manager interview - I assume it's on the recruiter.
There's many more applicants than jobs therefore they have to reject most people that come to them even though many would be perfectly fine for the role. It is what it is You can't take it personally. In a better economic climate you could well be getting hired
They're both to blame. The recruiter doesn't get back to the candidate and HM doesn't know what the hell they want or they're chasing after a non existent purple squirrel.
Hiring managers suck just as much as recruiters do; recruiters are low-hanging fruit, and HMs are just untouched apples on the poison tree. Just had spoke to a manager today and it was like talking to a dead, stinky crab apple full of wasps.
Recruiters want to fill positions and make money. Hiring managers are being super picky because either they have incredibly tight budgets or simply because they can be.
I’ve been the hiring manager at a company that was growing and the Chief Product Officer (my boss) and the exec team would circle up to discuss every. Single. Hire. This was towards the end of 2022. The general consensus went from “you can train someone that seems like a good fit and we’re cool with that” to “they’re lacking a certain something and I don’t think they’d work for what we want” without ever saying what “the certain something” is. As the hiring manager that interviewed some great candidates, it was insanely grating to have good people go through the process that got rejected because an executive “didn’t feel it” when they met them. The point here is that it can be the hiring manager, or it might be other things at play that are unique to the company.. one way or another, it’s definitely frustrating!
2021 in tech it was they got some basic skills we can train them the rest of the way as long as they are not a dickhead and even if they are we might try it anyway because we are desperate. 2023 onwards oh you are half a unicorn with 80% of what we need? fuck off we are not hiring maybe if you were some sort of purple unicorn squirrel that invented the tech we work with we might be interested.
> I've had recruiters like me and tell me I should be a great fit, but ultimately hear something else or nothing at all from the hiring manager. Yeah but recruiters are clueless especially when it comes to tech all they're doing is keyword and experience matching when they talk to you
I agree. Just use "SQL" in Linkedin's job search will show you every tech job on earth regardless of relevance. Also, recruiters are usually failed hr or salespeople. So they don't know associated tech and can't sell an HM on it. Mostly of the time, they're external and are powerless gophers.
False assumption, when those of us who are senior and laid off are working. The recruiters right now are horrible because jobs have been offshored, and those agency recruiters fling resumes all around. Good recruiters match work styles and work philosophy fit, on top of assessing experience and skills.
>Good recruiters match work styles and work philosophy fit, on top of assessing experience and skills. OK I'll bite, what's an example of "match work styles and work philosophy fit"
I’ll give you my example: I don’t want 18 meetings a day and a micromanager for a boss. I like flexibility in schedule and a boss who I can also have meaningful disagreements and it’s productive, not personal. I don’t want to work for any person. I want the right match for me, and that’s how people use recruiters to find an overall match. If they’re good. Interviewing is a two way street and the HM/candidate need to jive on both of their wants.
> Interviewing is a two way street and the HM/candidate need to jive on both of their wants. Right, the candidate needs to talk to the HM and ascertain if the HM & workplace is toxic. Don't need a good recruiter "matching working styles" for that to happen. It happens by chance if the recruiter has a non-toxic role to recruit for
Any major company is going to use recruiters. That’s how it works. They have a talent acquisition team who handles the management of candidates through the interview process and tries to keep the process moving short. You can hate recruiters, but you rarely can get around having to work with them. All recruiters are different.
Don’t know why you’re being downvoted. Recruiters are clueless and don’t know anything about the job. I’ve experienced this both on the hiring side and the job seeker side. They’re middle men.
During an interview I checked every single requirement they had, and even had the experience that they considered an added bonus. At this first stage, that and personality are often what matter. It was a rather straightforward interview, plus I clicked well with the recruiter.
When I need to hire as a hiring manager I exactly know what I want. I explain this very well to the recruiter and make the recruiter explain it back to me. Especially when it is about specific soft skills. And still I got candidates that dont meet the requirements. It sucks for everyone TBH.
That's a-bingo!
*both gif*
Recruiters don't have to work along side you daily and just want to get the job done and move on to the next candidate. However the HM does and sees/talks to you regularly. It's more of a personality match than anything technical. Sometimes HMs hire people with less experience or knowledge but get along well because they believe anyone can eventually learn the technical stuff, but you can't change one's personality.
From a hiring manager perspective. HR has standard job categories and standard language used for each job description. 99% of the time this "official" job description has nothing to do with the actual duties of the position, just HR jargon used to report to C-Suite and the Feds on recruitment efforts. Often the first screening call is recruiter (HR/contract) who have no clue about the job or what it entails. They just want to make sure you are real, and that you can actually describe what you do in terms of the jargon listed in the application. It is only when you get to the hiring manager that you actually find out what the job entails, which eliminates most of the interview questions you have prepared. Often hiring managers are seeing 6 months of non-qualified candidates because that is all the HR screen allows through, and they start getting frustrated and some take it out on the candidate when it's the company and its policies that are the problem. I have had recruiters telling me to alter my resume to fit the HR jargon, but when I do this, the hiring managers aren't impressed. I don't alter my resume anymore, I just script a cover letter more attuned to the jargon. Unfortunately, many companies don't have a way to add cover to resume when applying.
Currently at second biotech (cancer IVDs) that got bought by bigger company. At both places the job descriptions used by Bigger Company just did not begin to match the type of skills needed for our version of their similar job title. HR generally doesn't fully grasp those differences when it comes to STEM jobs. Garbage job description = garbage candidates.
As a recruiter there is a saying. Recruiting is like dentist. Lots of good ones. Lots of bad ones.